Story:Kings of Strife/Int 1
Intermission One “…Somehow, I knew this would happen.” Inusian Captain Luther Vinahkman grit his teeth and frowned as he looked up. All around him was fire, from the nearby burning houses to the ground around him. Corpses lay sprawled out on the hard packed ground of the village, and it was quiet. There was only the sound of crackling wood and melting brick, bones shifting to ash and smoke rising to the skies. There was no longer any screams permeating the darkness, not anymore. Captain Vinahkman looked up to the figure pointing a sword at him. The figure stood on top of a mound of debris just across the narrow street, far enough to be out of his range and close enough to be able to attack whenever he wanted to. Vinahkman’s eyes narrowed and he held even tighter to the gunblade in his own hands. There, looking down on him with cold obsidian eyes, stood Private Silverius of the Inusian military. He was a member of Vinahkman’s own personal squad – and was the man Vinahkman thought of as his own son, above even his biological family. “Somehow I knew you’d be the one to kill me… but not here. Not now, in this hell.” Vinahkman glared right into Silverius’ eyes, but met no emotion in return. It was like staring into a blank brick wall. Finally, Silverius spoke. “Fitting, isn’t it?” A tendril of flame licked upward towards Captain Vinahkman, and he kicked the burning dead body off his foot. Now free of any prior business, Vinahkman turned to Silverius and started to walk forward. The Private didn’t move in the slightest. Vinahkman’s navy blue mantle, one of the most identifiable traits of an Inusian soldier, flowed behind him as he walked, just barely keeping out of reach of the flames. They were all alone here, just Vinahkman and Silverius and hundreds of other dead bodies. The rest of the squad had already left the village and would be waiting for their teammates to finish the clean up job. Cleaning up. That was their mission. This was nothing new – it had taken up most of Vinahkman Squad’s time for the past eight months. Now, the Nneonian Civil War was coming to an end after fifteen long years of warfare, and all it took was half a million Inusian soldiers coming in and wiping out millions of people to do so. This was just part of the job and came with the territory of victory. It was hard to swallow, but it was better than another fifteen years of warfare. The world had had enough of war. This was just another standard clean up mission for a good cause. “Stop playing games with me, Crono.” Vinahkman’s frown had tightened and drew lines all over his hard middle-aged face. “Put that down and let’s get out of here. Now’s not the time for this.” “No, this is the time. You’re dying here, along with the rest of our sins.” “After all these years, I never took you to be the idealistic type, son.” “I don’t want you calling me Crono anymore.” “…! What?” Vinahkman couldn’t help but be taken aback as he looked up to the Private with bewilderment. Ever since he had found Singun Crono Silverius unconscious, starving, and bleeding in the slums of Morshia City all those years ago, just after the boy had turned 13, Vinahkman had been his guardian. Vinahkman groomed the boy and raised him to be the perfect soldier, and as a result Crono had idolized him and treated him as a father. There was love and mutual respect between the two, a product of a hard life and no one else to turn to – for the both of them. He had always been Pops, and the Private had always been Crono. So what did it mean for Silverius to cut that emotional tie? “You’re serious. You’re fucking serious.” “I am. This ends here.” Silverius’ face had not changed this entire time – he still wore the same hard look he adopted whenever he was taking care of business. Mouth tight like a line, nostrils flared, eyes half-open and emotionally dead; that was the look Silverius took on when he was serious and ready to kill. That was the only thing Vinahkman had never taught him. It was natural. “Who put you up to this? Fontaus? I know it wasn’t that blockhead Amano’s idea… Or are you all in on this? Is this some kind of mutiny or a statement?” “I have to end my own sins. I’m serious.” Silverius’ face darkened for a moment and he bit his lip. “This world is hell, and I’ve done nothing but perpetuate it. I can’t stand it any longer. None of us can.” “So the whole squad is a part of this. How long have you all been planning to betray me?” “Since we started performing these slaughter missions. This isn’t war, Captain. This is murder. This is wrong.” Vinahkman flinched and lowered his eyes. ‘He called me Captain, not Pops… He’s never done that before. Never.’ The leader of the Inusian squad needed no more indication that his pupil and adopted son was completely serious. “This is war. This is what happens when world peace is disturbed. It’s almost over, Crono. Don’t do this.” The Private audibly clicked the safety off his gunblade, drawing Vinahkman’s vision back upwards. “I told you not to call me that anymore.” “Hmph. So you’re going to disown me, and you’re going to kill me. Is that it? You’re going to remove the blood on your hands with more killing?” “You’re the one who taught me how to kill. I have to kill you if I ever want to redeem myself again.” Ever so slightly, Silverius’ lip trembled as he spoke. No. ‘That’s a lie.’ Vinahkman knew it, and he had known it since the day he laid eyes on Silverius, curled up in that Morshia City alleyway with nothing but bloodstained rags on his body. When that skinny little boy had looked up to him from beneath his black hair… those eyes shook Vinahkman to the core. They were the eyes of a killer. After a pause accentuated by a bead of sweat falling down Vinahkman’s face, he opened his mouth and rebuked the Private with a scowl. “You’re wrong, Crono. That’s not the kind of world we live in. Someone like you and me can never get away from killing. It’s all we know how to do. It’s who we are. You and I are killers!” “No!” For the first time, Silverius spoke with a perceptible frown and eyebrows pulled down on his face strongly. “I will find my peace! My happiness! The others are the same way… we’re fed up with this evil! I’ll find goodness, even if I have to drench myself in blood to do it! But never again will I kill an entire village of innocent people. Never again will I let someone command me to slaughter people not involved in war. Even if I have to lose myself along the way, I won’t allow myself to be trapped in this cycle of death!” Vinahkman was silent for a long time. The fire grew and grew, until it eclipsed the pitch black sky and almost surrounded the two bluecoats standing in the middle of the ruined street. It had taken too long to finish the operation; the three other members of the squad should have come back to check on them by now. ‘So they really are in on this. All four of my pupils, conspiring to kill me and run away from their duties.’ Vinahkman thought about his odds; he could kill Silverius here and escape the village before it engulfed him in flames, but if the other three were nearby, it was unlikely that he could take them all at once. Not with the skills he had taught them. Silverius’ shining pearl white gunblade shook right in front of Vinahkman’s nose. Slaughter Type I, an expensive model – one that Vinahkman had designed and created himself. The gunblade was an antiquated and volatile weapon that was more fragile than a normal sword and packed more explosive power than a normal rifle. It was Luther Vinahkman’s weapon of choice, so naturally Silverius had wanted to specialize in it. The Slaughter was a gift from Vinahkman for Silverius’ graduating and becoming an official soldier of Inusia almost a year ago. ‘This is how I should go. I lived by the gunblade, and now I die by the gunblade.’ He could fight back – but for what? Vinahkman smiled. ‘I hope you find your happiness, son. I hope one day you do wash the blood off your hands.’ He imagined Silverius with hair longer than the uneven neck-length it was now, or with a beard, or with a wife and children. He imagined the entire squad vacationing in the beaches of Shorica, enjoying the beautiful climate and laughing with drinks in their hands. He imagined his son being happy and finding true peace. It was a magnificent dream, but a dream nonetheless. “No matter how I look at it,” Vinahkman said with a sigh, "there really is no way. You’ll always be a killer, Crono. It's your destiny.” Silverius narrowed his eyes, removed the emotion from his face, and held his finger over the trigger on his gunblade. “Don’t blame me for this. Blame yourself, or this corrupt world.” A single shot rang out through the night of burning darkness. ...End of First Intermission. Main Page | Intermission 2 - Rescue-